The Opportunities Interface is designed to be easy to navigate, with different dashboards that allow you to see everything you need in one place. In this article we’ll show you around the main areas of the Opportunities Interface, and also take a look at the elements of Customer Records that are unique to this Interface.
The Home Screen of the Opportunities Interface is designed to give you a clear view of all your open Opportunities, and enable you to visualise where in the pipeline most Opportunities are currently sitting. It’s split into three main sections:
We’ll break these sections down and explain what can be done in each one. Let’s start with the menu:
This runs vertically down the left hand side (in blue) and includes buttons for different dashboard configurations in the following order:
Each of these options changes the Dashboard section of the screen and displays different functionality.
The dashboard takes up the majority of your screen, and is the main workspace you’ll use in the Opportunities Interface. You can use this section to view, edit and add your Opportunities, Pledges and Legacies; search for customer records; configure your interface settings; add Donations or Memberships to the basket; and plenty more.
As we mentioned above, the menu buttons allow you to view different dashboards. Let’s go down the menu options to look at each dashboard in more detail:
Opportunities
This is an overview of all your current Opportunities, as well as where they are sitting in your pipeline. The pipeline is broken into Stages, which provide a structure to your Opportunities. Here's what the default Stages look like, but you can edit these if necessary:
Click here for more information on Campaign Stages.
You can filter this dashboard based on a series of different parameters, to narrow down what’s displaying and only view specific Opportunities:
- The prospect's name.
- The Opportunity's description.
- The status of the Opportunity.
- The Campaign that the Opportunity belongs to.
- The Owner of the Campaign.
For example, selecting the Open status and searching would return only open Opportunities. A more complex search would be to look for all open Opportunities with a certain Owner, or belonging to one or more specific Campaigns (you can select multiple Campaigns or Owners to search for).
Activities
Similar to the Opportunities dashboard, the Activities dashboard is where you can see an overview of all your ongoing and completed Activities.
You can filter this by a range of different parameters in a similar fashion to Opportunities:
- The Activity’s subject.
- Completion status (also indicated by a green tick box next to the Activity).
- Priority (high, medium or low).
- Assignee (the member of your team responsible for it).
- Type (e.g. ‘meeting’).
- Any linked names (the people linked to the Activity).
- The Activity date range (e.g. ‘due today’).
A note on tabs
If you find yourself regularly conducting the same searches, you can create custom tabs in both the Activities and Opportunities dashboards which are easily accessible and have all of your search fields pre-populated.
This saves you needing to complete those fields each time you log in to the Opportunities Interface, and can therefore be a great time-saver. We suggest creating tabs for any routine search queries that you frequently use, such as ‘My To-Do’s’ in the Activities dashboard or ‘All Open Opportunities in the Corporate Giving Campaign’ in the Opportunities dashboard. Here's an example of how that might look:
Note that any tabs you create will be visible to you only, and so can be specific to the Campaigns, Activities or Opportunities which you are responsible for.
To create a new tab, first enter your search terms and click Search as normal. Once the results show up, enter a name in the Tab Name field on the right and then click the green plus sign next to your new tab name.
You’ll now see your custom tab every time you log in to the Opportunities Interface, at the top of the dashboard.
Here’s an example of saved tabs in the Activities dashboard:
And here’s an example of saved tabs in the Opportunities dashboard:
People
This section allows you to search for customer records in the same way as you would in the Sales Interface.
You can search customer records based on:
- Type (Individual, Organisation or All).
- Name (using Surname or First name, or by including a percentage sign (%) as a wildcard*).
- Customer ID.
- Postcode.
- Email.
*If you haven't used wildcards before, these allow you to search if you don't know the full name you're looking for. For example, if you searched for John% then the search would return customers whose surname starts with John - returning Johns, Johnsen, Johnson and so on.
The Advanced search feature allows you to search customers using even more specific information, such as Phone number, Address, Town, Attributes and Tags.
You’ll see that search results display slightly differently here than they do in the Sales Interface - here, you can also see information on any active Opportunities this customer has, as well as the next upcoming Activity.
We’ll cover searching for customer records in the Opportunities Interface in more detail later.
Donations and Memberships
In this section you can process donations and memberships (both of which are created in the Admin Interface - see our articles on setting up Funds and Memberships) and link them to your chosen Opportunity at the point you add the item and customer to the basket.
NOTE: unlike in the Sales Interface, donations processed in the Opportunities Interface must be linked to an Opportunity.
For more information on processing donations in Spektrix, please see this article. Note that this works in the same way as in the Sales Interface, but means you don't have to leave the Opportunities Interface in order to do so.
Reports
The Opportunities Interface comes with a standard suite of reports specific to this section of your Spektrix system which allow you to monitor and track progress on your Campaigns and Opportunities.
As with all other reports in Spektrix, custom versions of these can be built by the Spektrix Support team to better suit your requirements. The principles of navigating and running reports work in the same way as within the Insights & Mailings Interface, which you can read about in this article.
NOTE: these reports can be accessed through either the Insights & Mailings or Opportunities Interfaces.
Admin
Here you can view and edit the Funds, Campaigns, Stages, Activity Types and Relationship Types which appear across your Opportunities Interface.
You can navigate between these sections by clicking on the relevant tabs at the top of the screen. The Funds section just allows you to view the different Funds you have already set up (in the Admin Interface), but all of the other sections provide you with the opportunity to edit or create new items, as well as viewing them.
In each of the sections in which you’re able to add new items, you’ll see a button at the bottom of the screen which allows you to create a new item.
To edit an item, click on its name in the left-hand side of the screen and you’ll see that item displayed in the main part of the screen. If you hover the cursor over it, you’ll then see a blue border appear with a small pencil icon. Click anywhere in this main section to start editing.
This sits on the right hand side of your screen when you're in any of the sections of the Opportunities Interface (except Settings). It’s an alternative work space, which allows you to perform a variety of tasks.
NOTE: you can browse in the Dashboard as much as you need, moving between its different sections, and the Pinboard will stay the same.
From left to right, each tab allows you to do the following:
Add/amend Activities
Here you can see an overview of your Activities, organised by status, progress and recent views. You can also add new Activities by clicking the plus symbol inside the tab itself.
Process donations or memberships
In the Basket tab, you can start a transaction as you would in the Sales Interface by selecting a sales channel and adding a customer to the basket. You can then add donations and/or memberships from the Basket dashboard as required.
Pin customer records
The Pinboard allows you to drag and drop customer records from the People dashboard for later reviewing. This can be useful when, for example, you’d like to start the process of researching a potential opportunity.
Manage Invitations
The Invitations tab provides you with an overview of any Instances you’ve made available in the Opportunities Interface (i.e. are both Visible and On Sale for Opportunities), such as gala dinners. You can also create new Invitations for Event Instances by dragging customer records over from the dashboard. For more information on creating and editing Event Invitations click here.
Customer Records
Both the Opportunities and the Sales Interfaces reference the same customer database. This means that when you’re viewing the record of a Customer or Organisation in the Opportunities Interface (from the People section of the Dashboard), you'll see all of the same information you would normally be able to view in the Sales Interface, along with some Opportunities-specific extras.
As you can see from this screenshot, there are a few additional sections visible in the Opportunities Interface:
- Opportunities: view all of the customer’s associated Opportunities.
- Pledges & Legacies: view all of the customer’s Pledged donations.
- Timeline: view every interaction between you and the customer (for example Activities, tickets purchased, donations made etc.).
- Invitations: view any invitations to special events.
The blue note in the top right corner is visible in both the Sales and Opportunities Interfaces, but the purple note is only visible in the Opportunities Interface. If you have particularly sensitive information which you’d like to store against a customer record, you can use the purple note to make sure that it’s only visible to Opportunities Interface users.
When either note is populated with content, a squiggly line will appear on the icon. You can output the contents of both the blue and the purple note in the Donor Profile Report.
The Donor Profile report
This report provides a comprehensive overview of a customer's donation history, including all of the following:
- The customer’s relationships on the system.
- Any open Opportunities.
- Any blue or purple notes on the customer record.
- The customer’s ticket purchase and donation history.
- A record of any past or upcoming Activities associated with the customer.
This is a great document to read before meeting with a prospect, as it gives you an overview of all their touch points with your organisation.
Here’s an example of what the Donor Profile report looks like, using a fictional customer:
You can find the Donor Profile report in the Actions drop-down menu within the Customer Record:
You don't need to choose a Criteria Set for this report, so just select the option from the drop-down menu and open the PDF once it's finished running.
Searching for customers
As you can see from the previous People section, the process of searching is essentially the same in both the Sales and Opportunities Interfaces, so we won’t go into the details of how to search for customers here.
One thing which does differ, however, is the way in which customer records are displayed once you’ve performed a search. Here’s an example:
The list of records displays in alphabetical order by surname (or organisation name), with some additional Opportunities-specific information related to their record also shown:
- Active Opportunities: the names of any active (e.g. in-progress) Opportunities attached to that customer’s record.
- Next Activity: the date and details (including priority) of the next Activity involving that customer.
- Donated: the total amount ever donated by that customer.
For more information on searching for and/or adding new Customer Records, have a read of this article.
People management
Assigning or attaching customers in the Opportunities Interface works on a click-and-drag system. You can select the People icon (i.e. the little blue figure) against a customer’s record and drag it to an area in the Pinboard (an Activity you’re creating, for example) or to a new Campaign Stage (when looking at your Opportunities dashboard). That said, adding customers to a basket when processing a membership or donation works the same way it does in the Sales Interface, by clicking the Add customer to basket button from that customer’s record.
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Now that you know how to navigate your way around the Opportunities Interface, you should have nearly everything you need to start making use of your system. For more information on how to get started with the different elements of the Opportunities Interface, see this article:
Getting Started With the Opportunities Interface
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Spektrix Support team if you have any questions or would like to discuss anything in more detail.